


now I know that you fear God

by simonsjumpers



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, If Adam hadn't left the trailer park after the punch up basically, M/M, Post-TRB, a darker pynch, pynch - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-19
Updated: 2016-07-19
Packaged: 2018-07-25 10:00:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7528387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/simonsjumpers/pseuds/simonsjumpers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It had become too much for Ronan. Altogether too much. If God wouldn’t intervene, then Adam would just have to make do with Ronan.</p><p>----</p><p>or a slightly darker Pynch.</p>
            </blockquote>





	now I know that you fear God

**Author's Note:**

> It had become too much for Ronan. Altogether too much. If God wouldn’t intervene, then Adam would just have to make do with Ronan.
> 
> \----
> 
> or a slightly darker Pynch.

It had become too much for Ronan. Altogether too much. 

 

Adam with a bruise blooming over his cheekbone. Adam wincing slightly when Gansey clapped him on the back. Adam overhearing a couple screaming at each other in Nino’s after a particularly, well Ronan thought so anyway, entertaining break-up and cowering in the booth as if he wanted to disappear. Adam with blood leaking from his ear collapsed on the ground not wanting to get up again.

 

It was too much. And Ronan felt too helpless.

 

Adam had refused to leave home, even when Ronan has accidentally left a newspaper that advertised an apartment above St Agnes’ for rent. Instead, he stayed in that trailer waiting for his next beating, for him to break a bone or go deaf in the other ear. Gansey and Adam were fighting again, badly. Gansey’s frustration in Adam’s petulance to endure the abuse had come out roaring with as much passion as he had in his search for Glendower. At first Nino’s had become a battlefield, Adam and Gansey fighting in hushed tones over the table; then it became a no-man’s-land, neither boy showed up anymore. 

 

Ronan, for once, was stunned into a drifting silence. He didn’t have the energy to fight with Adam the way Gansey did. The St Agnes’ plan had failed. He took Adam to The Barns one afternoon to remind him _this is what a home should be,_ but he’d only succeeded in making Adam more miserable. And when he’d tried to broach the subject of Robert Parrish, Adam had waylaid him having had years of practice. 

 

 

They’d been lying in the fields, Ronan pushing his hands through the grass and tearing it up, Adam just staring wistfully at the sky, enjoying the moments he had away from home, work or school. Whenever Adam was out of his head for the briefest of moments, Ronan could always turn to look at the boy in reverence without the other noticing. Usually, he would peruse Adam’s features in a stoic silence, but today, with a faded bruise on his temple, Ronan couldn’t stay silent.

 

“Adam.” This pulled Adam from his trance. First name usages were reserved for only the seriousness of moments.

 

“Adam,” Ronan repeated, desperation creeping into his voice that he didn’t try to curb.

 

For a moment, Ronan could see it in his eyes and the slight parting of his lips, Adam’s resolve wavered. For one fleeting moment, Adam would have let Ronan sweep him away into one of the rooms at Monmouth or one of the rooms at The Barns and never go back to the trailer park again. An overwhelming joy erupted in Ronan so visibly that Adam realised his mistake and the wall of resolve he’d built got a little bit higher. Ronan cursed. He’d brought the deer to his palm but startled it so foolishly now it was leaping further away than it had ever been. 

 

“Drive me home would you, I have an English paper due in tomorrow that I haven’t started.”

 

Ronan would have called bullshit on Adam leaving an assignment this late as an excuse to avoid the conversation but he’d run out of energy.

 

 

It was Sunday and Ronan sat in church watching the rain drip down the stain glass window. Although it had stopped momentarily it had been raining all week and it had been putting an even greater damper on things. Adam wouldn’t come to The Barns if it meant being cooped up inside and having nothing to do but face Ronan’s silent begging to leave the trailer park. So Ronan hadn’t seen him for three days and with no way to contact him there was always an underlying anxiety about if he was okay or not.

 

In an effort to drag his mind from its constant cycle of _adamparrishadamparrishadamparrishadam_ … Ronan tuned back into the priest’s sermon. 

 

“… so as God commanded Abraham bound his son and lay him out on the altar. No matter his sorrow, this sacrifice and losing his only son was more important. Faith should be stronger than—”

 

Ronan got up so abruptly that the priest stopped short, confusion rife. Matthew turned to Declan who looked as shocked as he was exasperated. Before the scene could develop Ronan rushed down the aisle, out the door, and into his BMW. Instead of the usual respectful peel out of the carpark, he tore out of there with his foot firmly pushing down on the accelerator. Whether he was Abraham leaving Adam out to die, or Robert Parrish was hovering over Isaac with a knife in his hand, the situation could only have one ending. If God wouldn’t intervene, then Adam would just have to make do with Ronan.

 

With one hand on the wheel, Ronan took out his phone for once and texted Gansey. 

 

**im stopping this now**

 

This impulsive action was something Gansey would get behind.

 

He’d memorised the quickest route to the trailer park months ago. He wanted to be sure that when Adam needed to leave, Ronan would be the one to take him. Barely five minutes had passed when he was slamming the door of his car and making for the trailer door. Robert Parrish met him there, looking unconcerned but furious by the appearance of a fierce teenager making to get inside. He should have known better.

 

“Where’s Adam?”

 

“He’s not here.”

 

Ronan stopped. It was a possibility. Adam had said something last week about an extra shift. Ronan hadn’t thought this through and now all the energy he’d built up was for nothing. Caught off guard, Ronan’s reactions were too slow to block the punch that came into the side of his face. He sprawled backwards in the dust but was up on his feet almost instantly.

 

“You hit your son like that do you?” He spat at the man standing unmoved on the bottom step of his porch. “Did that feel just as good? At least I probably deserve it, but him…”

 

He didn’t finish, Robert Parrish was hauling him up by the collar of the shirt he reserved for church only.

 

“Maybe one night, I’ll hit him just hard enough that—“ 

 

Ronan didn’t let him finish. He brought his knee shooting up into Robert’s gut and then used his arm to send him slamming into the dust.

 

“You won’t get that chance.” Ronan snarled. 

 

It had become too much for Ronan. All together too much. The energy had been building inside of him for months, it was an untameable anger that would not be quenched even if Ronan wanted to. 

 

Ronan punched him for every time he’d seen Adam bruised, or seen him wince or cower at a noise or movement. Then he stopped counting and just kept on hitting anyway. Punch after punch. He didn’t stop when he felt the bone crack beneath his fist and heard the last guttural moan of the man. He stopped when it began to rain, pouring down, washing away his anger and leaving him with the realisation of what he’d done.

He closed his eyes and saw Declan and Gansey walking away from him forever. He saw the thread darkness that had been following him since his father died finally managing to suffocate all the light out of his life. He saw Noah, with his own face bashed in.

 

He crawled back and sat with his back against the wheel of the BMW, not taking his eyes off the body. Somewhere, probably close by, he heard a woman wailing in grief, sirens rushing his way, but he didn’t care. There he sat, staring at his handiwork. The trailer door was pushed open, and Ronan could do nothing to stop him from seeing.

 

Adam stepped off the porch of the trailer quietly, moving towards the body of his father like a wraith. He was not looking at Ronan.

 

Here they were. Two sons who had found their fathers’ body beaten to death on their driveway. But one had been loved, the other had not.

 

Adam lifted his face up to the sky, and Ronan swore he saw the rain washing away the bruises.

**Author's Note:**

> Basically, I wrote the line "Two sons who had found their fathers’ body beaten to death on their driveway. But one had been loved, the other was not." and I wrote from there. The concept of pynch mirroring each other has always interested me.
> 
> Come ask me what I know about welsh kings on tumblr -- @homerically
> 
>  
> 
> (title taking from Genesis:22 [because i went to a Catholic school and know these things])


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